


Wish

by someonestolemyshoes



Series: Wish [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Fire Demon AU, Ghibli AU, Howl's Moving Castle AU, KageHina - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-06 02:48:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11027019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/someonestolemyshoes/pseuds/someonestolemyshoes
Summary: The star hit the ground with a thud that shook the earth. It landed a few meters away, and it clattered and rolled, smoking and steaming, burning away flowers and grass and the soil itself until it came to rest, right at his feet.Tobio took a few cautious steps back.That thing was not a star at all.**Howl’s Moving Castle AU, in which Kageyama makes a wish upon a falling star, and gets Hinata instead.





	1. Chapter 1

Kageyama Tobio was never a greedy man.

He lost so much so small—his family, his friends, his home—but he didn’t often want for more. Not in rain or in snow, in the driest, most barren summers or the billowing Autumn winds, when he slept under the merciless skies with nothing but his ratty cloak and his ragged bag, for no town would welcome him; no matter how grumpy he might look or how sour he might feel, he never complained.

But, all the not-complaining took its toll, and Tobio grew tired.

He grew tired and he grew _heavy_ , weighted by the burden of it all.

And sometimes, just sometimes, he would wish for the smallest of breaks. A breather; a respite from all he has to carry, even for just a little while.

But, with nobody around to hear him, Tobio’s wish—time and time again—went unanswered.

The years went on, and his burden grew heavier still. It sagged his shoulders and filled his chest, squeezing and choking him, and all he wanted—all he asked for—was a reprieve, however small it might be.

And it was one night as he dragged himself over the meadow by the lake, his bones weighted and weary, that he saw the star.

The sky that night was grey with thick, stormy clouds, and a cool wind blew the softest of breezes to rustle the long grass. Tobio pulled his heavy feet one after the other, watching the moonlight weave in and out of the clouds across the lake. It shimmered in the water, and he stopped to watch it play.

The clouds shifted, and a streak of light sailed over the smooth surface.

Tobio looked up.

The star shot over the sky, brighter even than the moon. Tobio watched it go, and a low memory hummed in the back of his mind.

_Wish upon a falling star, my love, for it is as she falls from grace that she will finally hear you._

“A break,” he pleaded to the night sky, “just for a little while. I wish I could _rest_.”

As he wished, the star fell faster. It blazed, and as he stared, it burned brighter, brighter and _brighter_ , and closer it came, hurtling to the earth—towards him, like a cannonball shot from the heavens.

The star hit the ground with a thud that shook the earth. It landed a few meters away, and it clattered and rolled, smoking and steaming, burning away flowers and grass and the soil itself until it came to rest, right at his feet.

Tobio took a few cautious steps back.

That _thing_ was not a star at all.

It looked very much like a boy—a young man, his own age or perhaps a little less—only, Tobio had never seen a man anything like it before. It unfurled its limbs from their heap on the smoldering ground to lie flat on its back.

Tobio eyed the little thing warily. It was small, petite, and every last inch of it was covered in orange, burning fire, bleeding out of its very skin. It lifted its head from the earth slowly, dazedly, and when its eyes found Tobio, it blinked.

“Ah!” it squeaked, and Tobio took another step back. It propped itself up on bony little elbows, and it smiled at him with a mouth full of red-ish fire.

“You!” It said, and Tobio looked around. Him, it must mean, for there was nobody else in sight.

“…Me,” he said, and the fiery things smile grew wider.

“What’s your name?” it asked.

“Tobio,” he said slowly, “ Kageyama Tobio.”

The little thing wiggled its feet.

“What a _nice_ name,” it said, still grinning, “I’ve never heard one like that before!”

Tobio raised a brow.

“What are you—”

“—oh!” it said, and it scrambled to sit upright with its thin, flaming legs crossed in a neat little bow. It scrunched up its face as though it were thinking, and then it said, in a practiced, reciting voice,“Thank you very much for your wish! How may I be of service?”

“I didn’t—my wish wasn’t for _you_ ,” Tobio said. The thing gave him a bewildered stare. “I wished on that star—the falling one. You just…dropped out of the sky at the wrong time.”

“Silly,” the thing said, “stars don’t _fall._ And they don’t listen to wishes either—you really think a _star_ has the time to help you? That falling thing was me, and I heard your wish, or, well, I heard you _make_ a wish, so—here I am!”

The little thing smiled even wider. There was something impish to it, in the way it grinned and the playful, childlike light of its eyes, but it _burned_ , and the grass around it wilted.

“And what exactly _are_ you?”

The little thing gave a proud grin and puffed up its narrow chest.

“I,” it said, “am a fire demon.”

Tobio blinked at it.

“A fire demon,” he said, and the demon nodded.

“And you…heard me make my wish,”

“Correct.”

Tobio gave it a skeptical look.

“And you’ll grant it for me?”

The fire demon shook its head. Tobio glowered, and the fire demon shrivelled in on itself.

“Dumbass!” he grumbled. “What the hell are you here for then?”  

Tobio stared down at it. The fire demon was wispy around the edges, dancing, flickering flame, and when it blinked its amber eyes burned like hot coals.

“I don’t grant wishes,” it said. It tilted its head, and its fiery hair crackled. “But! I can make you a deal.”

“A deal?”

The fire demon nodded. It flopped to lie on its stomach and propped its chin on its hand, looking for all the world an eager, curious child, were it not for the hot, red flame licking over it.  

“A bargain! Give and take, Tobio,” it said. “So,” it floated up like smoke, elbows braced on nothing to keep its head propped up, and up it rose, right off the ground and into the air, hovering to a stop when those burning eyes were level with Tobio’s. “Make me an offer I can’t refuse.”

“I don’t have anything to give,” he said. The fire demon laughed.

“Sure you do!” it said, rolling to its back and tipping its head, so close the heat from its tiny upturned nose tickled against Tobio’s forehead. “You’ve got lots of nice things.”

Tobio’s eyes crossed as he frowned at the little demon.

“I don’t understand.”

The fire demon blinked those big, coal-bright eyes at him. It flipped, abrupt, back onto its stomach, leaving little trails of simmering flame as it went. _Gosh_ , it was warm. Tobio hadn’t felt warmth like that in years.

“You’ve got nice hair,” the demon said, “and those eyes—I’ve never seen eyes that colour before! You could give me those.”

Tobio smacked away the demons reaching fingers, running a protective hand over his head.

“Dumbass, I need those!”

The fire demon huffed.

“You could live without,” it whined, “it’s all part of the bargain.”

“Not my eyes,” he said.

“Just one?”

“No! Not my eyes, not my hair. What else could you take?”

The fire demon looked him over. It danced around him, a slow, flaming tornado, looping and looping, appraising, one hand cupped over its mouth in thought.

And think it did. It thought and it thought and it _thought_ , and Tobio grew dizzy in the swirling fire. The air around him blazed with it, and his skin seared in the places where the little demons fingers touched him. It poked at his shoulders, his hands, his back and his legs before it stopped, and sank its fiery feet to the floor. It was only then that Tobio realised just how small the demon was—without the dancing flames topping its head, it barely reached up to Tobio’s shoulders.

“So many choices,” it mewled. “How about your hands?”

Tobio shook his head.

“No? _Uwaaaah_ , what can you do without, huh?”

Tobio looked himself over. He was nothing substantial; a thread of a boy, tall and stringy, lost in his own skin. Surely, there was no part of him the little demon could value—perhaps he should offer an eye after all, or a hand. He would surely learn to live without one.

“Whatever you pick next,” he said. The demon blinked at him. It cocked its head, and the tapering flames of his hair flickered in the breeze.

“That is…trustworthy,” it said, surprised. Tobio shrugged a shoulder.

 

“I can’t decide what to give,” he said, “so, you choose.”

The fire demon drew another slow circle around him. There was no joy left in its eyes, no spark, just embers that blazed their path over Tobio’s skin. It hummed, and came to a stop once more, toe to toe with Tobio.

A hand landed against his chest.

It looked, much like the rest of the demon, like flame. Translucent, curling and flickering in the wind, the glow of it chasing away the darkness over Tobio’s shirt where it rested, but despite the lightness of it, the airiness, it felt _heavy_ against him. Real, and whole.

It didn’t burn him like he thought it might. The fire demon’s hand sat against his shirt where it smoked and smoldered, but the fabric did not catch alight and his skin did not roast. The warmth of it sank through him, running the cold from his bones and Tobio, despite himself, leaned into the touch.

The demon smiled.

“I think I know what I’ll take,” it said. “And you’re sure? That whatever I choose, you’ll give me?”

Tobio nodded. The demons fire burned bigger, brighter.

“In that case,” it said, “I’d like your heart.”

Tobio’s chest grew warmer as the demon flamed. His heart seemed to swell, beating frantic against the press of the little demons palm; it was answering for itself, it seemed, and Tobio had already given his yes.

“I’ll die,” he said quietly.

“Not if you don’t want to,” the fire demon said. He stepped in close, and the fires that engulfed him licked at Tobio’s skin. “I’ve chosen what I’d like to take, now you can choose what you’d like me to give.”

“It’s that simple?”

The demon’s smile grew wider, and he nodded.

“It’s _that_ simple.”

“I don’t want to die,” he said, “but there are more things that I want.”

“Your heart is an awfully expensive trade,” the fire demon said, “I can give you so much, for the most precious part of you.”

Tobio swallowed. He thought about his wish—for his burdens to be gone, lifted from his shoulders even if for only a little while, but in the face of _anything_ , it seemed like such a small dream. He could ask for the world; he could ask this little demon for all the riches of the earth, for prosperity, or he could ask for the barest of necessities—for food and shelter, a roof over his head and a bed to lay in.

But the fire demon was so _warm_. He had missed such a comfort.

And suddenly, Tobio couldn’t bare to be without it.

“Company,” he said. The fire demon blinked at him. “Your company. It’s…I’m alone. I want you to stay.”

The demon stepped even closer. Tobio’s heart beat harder still, and the demons fingers dug a little deeper into his shirt.

“That’s a big ask,” the demon said.

“I’m paying a big price.”

The demon laughed, then, and the sound of it shattered the darkness around them. The clouds parted and the stars winked, and a cool shaft of moonlight bore down upon them. In the pale glow the demons flames danced, but they were softer, somehow, than before.

“You’re playing along so well!” It said, smiling. “Nobody has ever let me get this far. So you’ll really let me take it? If I stay?”

Tobio thought. What else could he ask for? What would he want more than this—than a companion in the cold?

“Yeah,” he said.

“Yes!” The demon beamed, and in its broad smile Tobio saw, for the most fleeting of moments, coals where teeth should be—red, burning coals, smoking at the corners of his lips.

“Will it hurt?” Tobio asked. The demon cocked its head once more.

“It’s not supposed to, I don’t think,” it said, “but I’ve never tried it before, so I don’t know. Maybe?”

Tobio spluttered, and the demons fingers tightened against his shirt.

“What—you’ve never _tried_ it before? What do you mean you’ve never _tried_?”

“I mean,” the demon said, “nobody else has let me. Nobody has ever offered me a trade, you’re the first one! Congratulations!”

As his elation grew, the fire demons flames did, too, spinning and weaving in the night air, curling in big, smoky tendrils and perhaps it was the moonlight, but Tobio could have sworn the very tips burned blue.

“Should that not be, I don’t know, a disclaimer?” He said as the flames danced higher. The demon shrugged a shoulder.

“Doesn’t matter now, anyways, you’ve agreed. We have a deal, right?”

“I don’t—.”

“Your heart for my companionship, correct?”

“I—,” Tobio started, but the demon’s smile fell, and his fire grew a raw, angry red.

“It’s not fair to back out of a bargain, you know,” he said. The demon’s fingers rubbed his chest, and Tobio could feel the heat of them behind his bones as it caressed its trade. “I’ll take good care of it, I promise.”

“Alright,” he said. “Alright, fine. Okay. We have a deal.”

The demon grinned something wicked, and its fire blazed blue, whipping around him. It tore at Tobio’s clothes like beastly claws, lifting the hem of his shirt and the tips of his hair as it raged around them both. The demon stretched up on his toes, so high little tendrils of flame lifted him off the floor to float once more, face to face with Tobio. The fingers on his chest dug deeper, pressing with little blunt nails that stung where they lay.

“I’ll take it now,” it said, its nose nudging up along the side of Tobio’s. Even in the heat of the flames Tobio could feel the warmth breeze of something like breath, teasing against his lips as it spoke. “Deep breath.”

Tobio sucked in a lungful of air right from the little demon’s mouth. It wisped like smoke in his chest, thick and heavy and cloying, and he coughed, right as the demon settled its open lips over Tobio’s.

And something very strange happened.

Beneath the press of the demon’s kiss, low down in his chest, Tobio’s heart gave one strong, echoing beat. It gave another, and another, and as the little demons hand pushed against him, the beating grew hot.

The heat swelled in him, and the fire demon’s tongue flickered at his lips. The beating heat rose. It lifted up, out of his chest and into his throat, his mouth, passing over his tongue and into the fire demon’s waiting lips. Tobio felt the shudder run through it as the demon swallowed, and only then did he pull his mouth away.

The flames around him drew back. They settled to the calm, muted orange they once were, flickering right out of the demons skin, but even with the absence of their embrace, Tobio felt warm.

The demon sunk back down to the floor, and took a step back. The hand on Tobio’s chest withdrew, and instead it settled over the demon’s own chest, and beneath its soft press Tobio could see it—his heart, a fluttering orb of the bluest light, beating a slow, regular rhythm.

Without it, he felt lighter. He smiled, but the little demon was frowning, fingers clenched over his prize.

“What?” Tobio asked. The demon looked up at him, and for the first time, Tobio saw something like sadness in him.

“It’s heavy,” the fire demon said. “I didn’t realise how heavy it would be. How long have you been carrying it?”

“For forever,” Tobio said.

“All on your own?”

“Well, yeah,” Tobio said, “that’s…sort of how body parts work, stupid. You can’t just pawn them off on other people. If something is too heavy, it’s your own burden to bare.”

The demon’s eyes grew sadder still.

“Doesn’t it,” he said, swallowing, “doesn’t it get tiring? It must be exhausting.”

Tobio shrugged.

“Maybe,” he said, “I don’t know, I’ve never not had to hold it before. It’s…nice, I guess, without it.”

For a long while, the demon only blinked at him. It blinked with those big, owlish eyes, and then it blinked some more, and then its face set into something hard and resolute, and the hand at its chest balled into a fist.

“Well, I have it now,” it said, “I’ll carry your burden, so you can rest for a while.”

Abruptly, Tobio’s wish sprung to mind. _I wish I could rest_. It might not be the fire demons job to grant wishes, but, Tobio thinks, biting back his smile, it’s doing an awfully good job of it.

“…thanks,” Tobio said. The demon nodded its fiery head, and a little of the sadness bled out of its eyes.

“Cool!” it said. “So, Tobio, what do you wanna do first?”

“Do you have a name?” Tobio asked, then, because it felt most important now to give a title to his companion. The little demon smiled, impish, and Tobio watched the soft blue burn of his own heart in its chest grow a little stronger.

“I do,” the demon said, “would you like it?”

Tobio squinted down at it.

“What’s it gonna cost me?”

The demon laughed, loud and spritely in the cool night air, with its palms pressed over its stomach as it did. It looked up at him, and the little thing patted its chest and grinned.

“I have all the payment I need,” it said, holding out a hand for Tobio to shake. “So, call me Hinata.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Travelling with a fire demon proved harder than Tobio had ever anticipated.
> 
> It’s not altogether strange, to see odd beings about the towns—wizards and witches selling potions and spells, spirits and sprites and tiny little fair folk, sprinkling dust in the sun-stripped air, a whole myriad of magical, mystical creatures strewn across the countryside—it’s just, the people throughout the land don’t take too kindly to demons.

Travelling with a fire demon proved harder than Tobio had ever anticipated.

It’s not altogether strange, to see odd beings about the towns—wizards and witches selling potions and spells, spirits and sprites and tiny little fair folk, sprinkling dust in the sun-stripped air, a whole myriad of magical, mystical creatures strewn across the countryside—it’s just, the people throughout the land don’t take too kindly to  _demons_.

Hinata isn’t all that threatening. He’s  _small_ , and though his flames smoke the earth, they don’t burn Tobio’s skin. He is always smiling, or laughing, bouncing along at Tobio’s side, leaving nothing but little scorched patches and dusty tendrils in his wake.

But demons bring bad omens, that is what the people say. In the first few towns they’d passed, the locals had whispered behind their hands at their passing, darting their eyes and locking their doors, hurrying from the streets until soon enough, Tobio and Hinata were the only ones left.

Hinata never seemed to mind. He strolled on merrily at Tobio’s side, the very tips of his flames crackling in the quiet streets,  _oohing_  and  _aahing_  at every closed stall, every shut-up shop like they were the finest of treasures. Sometimes, he would talk loudly and boisterously of these towns without people.

“Where is everybody?” He’d say, oblivious to the shutters rattling closed even as they passed. “I thought towns were supposed to be  _busy_.”

This was another issue. Hinata, despite all the obvious signs, hadn’t seemed to notice that the absence of townspeople and his presence in their land were, in any way at all, linked. And Tobio had yet to explain the problem.

It didn’t feel quite right, somehow, to tell the spritely little demon that people were fleeing from his very presence, like animals flee wildfire. Hinata would probably understand—he knows what he is, and surely he must know how others see his kind—but whenever the chance to set things straight has arisen, Tobio has shied away, fumbling out excuses under the intensity of Hinata’s gaze.

Soon enough, Tobio learned to avoid the issue altogether, by travelling through the busier areas by night.

They didn’t escape Tobio’s notice, the eyes that peered through cracks in blacked-out windows, watching their passage under the moonlight. Their judgement pressed in on him with every step;  _that boy_ , he could hear them say, their collective thoughts loud like hisses travelling on the wind,  _that boy and his demon_.

Still, it wasn’t particularly terrible, to begin with. Hinata, in the least, was good company, filling long periods with constant chatter. It helped to take a little of the edge off Tobio’s new situation: he was no longer alone, but with a demon at his side, he’d be outlawed wherever he turned.

Before—before the wish, and the deal, and Hinata—Tobio had, at least, been reluctantly accepted wherever he strayed, if only for a short time. When he was just a boy, alone for the first time in a frighteningly large world, people had fed him and some, in the colder months, had even housed him. As he grew up though, he became known as a nomad, a beggar; a lone traveler, and not a particularly hardened one, always too thin and too ragged about the edges.

But Tobio had never, not in all his life, presented a danger to anyone before now.

Now, though, each new town or village thought ill of him before he set foot in their boundary. His reputation preceded him; a young man in tattered rags, shrouded in a hooded cloak, wandering the land with a  _Hell beast_  at his side.

Regardless, Tobio could cope. It was nice, walking with Hinata as his company, warm in the flicker of his flame even on the cooler summer nights.

Soon enough, though, a problem with their travelling pattern presented itself; nowhere is open at night to get  _food_ , and Tobio’s supply was beginning to run low.

And the only way Tobio would be able to get anything would be to travel in the day, when the shops and stalls and markets were running, and to take the journey alone.

He broached the subject one afternoon, in the shade of a large tree deep in a forest that rode the edges of a quiet farming town. Hinata was talking on, mindless babble much like always, settling into Tobio’s side where he sat, braced with his back to the thick trunk.

Opening his bag, Tobio poked around what was left of his supply. A small, wrapped pack of dried, salted beef; a lump of cheese with green spores sprouting over it; an orange, too squishy beneath the peel, and a soft canteen, half-full with river water. Besides that, there was a stone, wide and flat, that Tobio used to cook on; a pair of weathered chopsticks to eat with, and a small knife, sheathed away and buried beneath everything else. Just in case.

Hinata was squirming at his side, wriggling to get comfortable against him, and on he talked, one-sided conversations running one after the other from his tongue.

“Hinata,” Tobio said, and the demon fell still and silent. “Wake me up while it’s still light today.”

Hinata cocked his head at him. Sitting this close, the warmth of his fire began to engulf them both, little flames licking their way over Kageyama’s cloak, wrapping him like a blanket.

“Why?”

“I need to go into town,” he said. Hinata perked up at once, glowing amber eyes burning wide and bright.

“What’re we gonna do there? Are there gonna be  _people_  in this one? We haven’t seen other people in  _ages_.”

“ _We_ aren’t doing anything.  _I_ am going to get food, and  _you_ ,” Tobio said, pushing Hinata by the shoulders so he was sitting flat on the ground once more, instead of hovering over Kageyama’s lap, like he’d been trying to do, “are going to stay here.”

_“Uwaaah_ , Tobiooo,“ Hinata whined. "That’s gonna be  _boring_. Why do you get to have all the fun, huh?”

“Because I said so,” Tobio said. “I need to food, and I have no money. You—you draw too much attention.”

Hinata tipped his head even further. The flames flickering from his hair dipped and jumped, spitting little sparks into the air.

“You’re gonna take stuff again?” Tobio rolled his eyes, and threw himself back against the tree trunk, folding his arms.

“I don’t have a choice,” he said defensively, “I can’t pay. I have nothing to trade. I need to eat or I’ll  _die,_ so stop looking at me like that.”

Hinata blinked owlishly.

“Like what?” He said.

“Like you’re  _judging_  me.”

“Not judging,” Hinata said. He cushioned himself in to Tobio’s side once more, and the warm breath of his flames wrapped tighter around him. They lulled him, so much that his eyes began to drift closed, despite his fighting to hold them open. “I’ll wake you up before it gets dark.”

* * *

 

True to his word, Hinata did. He poked Tobio awake with a little warm finger to his cheek just as the sun was beginning to sink, painting the sky the palest pink between the clouds.

“You wait here,” Tobio said. He emptied the feeble contents of his bag onto the floor by Hinata’s knees–the leftover food, his canteen, the stone and the chopsticks. In it, he left only the knife, the weight of it impossibly heavy against his thigh. “Just…stay hidden, if anyone comes by.”

He threw his bag over his shoulder and fastened his cloak around himself, shielding the near-empty pouch from view. Hinata blinked up at him, crossing his legs and grabbing ahold of his ankles. When he tipped his head this time, there was no childlike curiosity to his gaze—only a frightening intensity that, for the briefest of moments, Tobio was sure, burned the bright orange lights of his eyes coal-black.

“You’re gonna come back, right?”

Tobio nodded, swallowing.

“Yeah,” he said. “Can’t exactly abandon you can I, dumbass?”

Hinata raised a little hand to press over the orb pulsing in his chest; the pale blue light of Tobio’s heart, beating a regular rhythm within the demon himself.

“Will you be long?” Hinata asked. Tobio shrugged a shoulder, tugging his hood up.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I’ll be back before dark, I think. Just…just wait  _here_ , okay? Even if I take longer.”

Hinata flopped, defeated, to lie on his back, waving a helpless hand in the air above him.

“Go, go,” he said. “I’ll be here. Don’t take  _forever_  though, alright?”

Tobio nodded. He tugged the edges of his cloak close in around himself and, with one last, long look at the fire demon, took off through the forest, in the direction of the town.

* * *

 

The market was bustling when Tobio arrived, filled with people cramming last minute to collect their groceries. This is what he’d hoped for; it’s easier to sneak between a mass of bodies to take what he needs, than it is to steal in the quiet moments.

Things went smoothly enough. In even less time than he’d thought, Tobio was making his retreat, the bag beneath his cloak full to bursting with a wide array of foods; fruits, vegetables, bread and cheese and eggs, oils to cook with, and meats, both fresh and salted—so much it strained his shoulders to carry.

Back in the forest, Hinata was waiting, lying flat on his back and tossing a little ball of flame up in the air. When he spotted Tobio coming back through the trees, he let the ball fall right into his mouth, swallowing it down and puffing a little ring of smoke between his lips.

“You’re back!” He said, beaming. He sat up, so abruptly his little body lifted right the way off the floor to hover in the air. Tobio shrugged off his cloak and lowered his bag, then stretched, cracking out the kinks in his back. “Whoa, you got a  _lot_.”

Tobio eyed the full bag, and his stomach growled.

“I’m hungry,” he said. He sat cross-legged on the forest floor, reaching a hand to pull Hinata’ back down to earth by the ankle as he did, and began tugging out the items he had taken.

It’d been so long since he had a good, full meal and, unable to decide where he should begin, Tobio fished up an apple and took a huge bite of it. He held it to his lips with a hand growing sticky with its juices, and with the other, he continued unloading his bag. He pulled out the little wedge of cooked ham, and took a bite of that, too, and then the block of cheese. Between the sweetness of the apple and the saltiness of the ham, the taste of the cheese was almost lost, but the creaminess spread thick between his teeth, so much so it made him groan.

“Slow down,” Hinata said. Tobio looked over at him and, suddenly self-conscious, wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “It’s not gonna disappear if you don’t eat it all now, right?”

Swallowing, Tobio nodded, and laid the cheese back down. From their little pile of discarded items, Hinata pulled the thin, flat stone, and laid it flat on his palm, flames crackling up around it.

“You want something hot?”

* * *

 

Ten minutes later, with the sky growing dark and the stars winking above them, Tobio and Hinata sat, oil sizzling on the stone still resting in Hinata’s hand.

“What’re you gonna have?” Hinata asked, eyeing the mountain of food. Tobio considered his options for a moment, and then opened an egg box, taking one out and cracking it on the edge of the stone.

“Eggs,” he said, shaking the last of the whites from the shell. Hinata watched on, fascinated, with something like hunger darkening his gaze. The oil spat and sputtered, and the egg bubbled on top of it.

“What about that part?”

Hinata pointed to the shell in Tobio’s hand.

“This? It’s just rubbish,” he said, flicked his arm to throw it to one side.

“Ah—ah, no, gimme,” Hinata said, gesturing to the broken shell. Tobio frowned over at him.

“These get thrown away,” Tobio said. “You can’t eat them.”

“ _You_ can’t. but fire needs nourishment too, you know.”

To prove his point, Hinata wilted the flames of his palm, and the sizzling oil in the stone began to settle around Tobio’s uncooked eggs. He sighed, and tossed the shells into Hinata’s lap.

“ _Alright_ ,” Hinata said, grinning. He shovelled up the shells and tossed them between his teeth, crunching them down and humming as he did. Tobio grimaced.

“Disgusting,” he said, cracking open a second egg. He handed the shell over, and Hinata chewed it down, licking hungrily at his lips. “I’ve never seen you eat before.”

Hinata shrugged a shoulder, watching Tobio scoop the cooked egg on his chopsticks and slurp the whole thing into his mouth. He swallowed, barely stopping to chew.

“I eat sticks and stuff all the time,” he says, “you just never look at me all that often when we’re walking. I’d go out without fuel, stupid.”

Tobio took up his second egg, and then he opened a pack of uncooked meat, and laid two strips on the oil. Hinata’s flame burned bigger.

“Didn’t know fire demons could  _go out_ ,” Tobio said. Hinata nodded, and hummed.

“I’m still  _fire_ , you know. I can still be smothered out, or washed away, and I can burn out if I don’t feed myself! Why did you  _think_  I don’t like rain?”

“Good to know,” Tobio said. “Fills me with confidence, knowing the thing housing my  _heart_  could be doused out in a storm.”

“I’m careful! I keep myself fed, we find shelter when the weather gets bad, so it’s all fine! No need to worry.”

Tobio hummed. Once his meat was cooked, he swallowed it down hastily, and chased his meal with a few mouthfuls of water from the pouch.

“Okay,” he said, wrapping up the food and packing up his bag. “We should get going. Don’t wanna be around when people realise their stuff’s gone missing.”

* * *

 

Over the next couple of weeks, they walked on much the same, travelling by night with the moon and the stars overhead to guide them. Hinata continued to chatter, sharing stories from tens, maybe  _hundreds_  of years of flitting around the world, bouncing from person to person, searching for deals to tether himself.

Sometimes, between his tales, Hinata would ask questions.

“How come we’re always walking?” He’d say. Or, “don’t you have somewhere to live? Is that where we’re going?” Or, on those days when the stray stares through windows catch Tobio’s gaze and sink him in his clothing, Hinata would say, “why does your heart feel so  _heavy?_ ”

The answers were always hard. They travel because Tobio has nowhere to call home; he has never been able to settle because he is a beggar, and a  _thief_ , and to lurk too long in one town would draw too much attention. And now, he can’t even pass through in daylight, not with Hinata at his side—but that part, Tobio still had not shared.

And his heavy heart—that was harder to answer for still. Without it, Tobio still felt sadness. Even with Hinata beside him, he felt the loneliness of being an outsider more and more acutely as time went by—perhaps even moreso than before, now that he is a tale told on the breeze, a nightmare passing from town to town;  _the boy and his demon_.

But it didn’t feel fair to tell him such a truth, so instead, Tobio told him how much a heart can weigh. He told him that of  _course_  it was heavy—any part of him would be heavy for the little demon to hold, so unused to the weight as he was.

Hinata never looked entirely satisfied with the answer. He would always frown, squeezing a hand to his chest, right where Tobio’s heart beat within him, and for a long while after, they would walk on in silence.

Every few days, Tobio would slip off into the nearest town, leaving Hinata waiting somewhere hidden and quiet, while he gathered whatever supplies he was lacking. It was always easier, stealing like this; taking little and often, rather than bigger hauls that left more than one merchant suspicious.

Hinata didn’t like the alone time, but he grew used to it, his whining abated by the scraps Tobio would toss for him to eat. Among his favourites were eggshells, fruit peels, seeds and pulp, but Tobio took to feeding him just about everything, to save on waste or litter and cover their tracks between towns.

Sometimes, this plan backfired. As Tobio discovered, an awful lot of things didn’t agree with the little demon, some much, much worse than others.

They were passing through the centre of a village on a cloudy, still night, when Hinata began to complain.

“Urgh, Tobio,” Hinata groaned, trailing his feet. Tobio looked over his shoulder, and saw the little demon wilting, both hands clutching at his stomach. “What did you give me?”

“A wrapper,” Tobio said, frowning. “What’s wrong with you?”

Hinata groaned again, this time coming to a stop in the middle of the street. The houses around them lay silent, and with a moonless, starless sky, the only light in the village came from Hinata, where he fell to his knees, squeezing his arms around himself.

“Oi,” Tobio said, nudging him with his toes. “Come on, get up.”

“ _Hurts_.”

Before Tobio’s eyes, Hinata’s flames began to droop. The colour faded, from the soft, muted orange to something dull and grey, like ash. Tobio knelt beside him, resting a tentative hand on his shoulder. Even with his palm pressed into the flame, Hinata didn’t feel warm.

The fire demon coughed, and a plume of noxious purple smoke billowed from his mouth. The stench of it burned Tobio’s nostrils, sending him reeling back. Hinata coughed again, spilling more of the toxic gas into the street, thick tendrils of it rising up in the air.

From the corner of his eye, Tobio saw curtains flutter in one of the windows. Uneasy, he glanced around them.

People in some of the houses were  _moving_. Tobio could see dim lights come to life behind blackout curtains, hear the shuffle of feet over wooden flooring, and he could even hear voices, low ones, whispering behind closed doors. He pulled his cloak up over his face to block out some of the stench, and leaned in close, wrapping his fist around Hinata’s upper arm. The flames made a weak attempt to curl over him, barely even tickling where they lapped at his skin.

“Hinata,” he said, hushed. “Hinata, I think we need to leave.”

The little demon didn’t move to stand. Instead, he curled deeper into himself, hugging at his middle and shuddering with every breath. Clouds of smoke swirled around them, the fumes dizzying.

“I don’t feel good,” Hinata moaned, belching another wave of purple gas.

“Sorry,” Tobio said. “Sorry, I won’t—I won’t give you that again. But we need to go.”

Abruptly, the street around them fell eerily silent once more. Tobio watched light after light blink out in the houses, watched the curtains pull all the way closed, listened to all the movements come to a stop until the only sound left was Hinata, wheezing smoke and moaning his discomfort.

Tobio shuffled closer, tightening his grip on Hinata’s arm. He whipped his head around, his body on high alert for any signs of movement. People had  _seen_  them. They had seen Hinata, weakened, and a weak demon, everybody knows, is a vulnerable one.

“Can you stand?”

Hinata only groaned in response. Tobio tugged at him, but the fire demon didn’t budge. He stayed, bent double now, with his forehead to the floor. His fire had shrunk so small, even the little weeds on the path beneath him didn’t set ablaze.

Something overhead clicked.

Tobio’s gaze shot up, and as it did, a window high up in one of the houses was thrown open, and out of it came—a blanket.

Except, a regular blanket shouldn’t fall so fast. It plummeted, heading straight for them, and at the last second Tobio lurched himself forward, on top of Hinata’s crumpled form. The blanket thumped down on top of him.

It was heavy, woollen, and weighted in every corner, so much so that the feel of it hitting his back took the wind out of him.

The sudden movement seemed to spur some life into the fire demon. He let out a sharp, piercing cry, and his flames roared up, flickering a bright, burning orange at the edges. They  _hurt_  where they licked at Tobio’s skin, the edges of his clothes beginning to simmer.

“My fire,” Hinata wheezed, scrabbling to lift the edge of the blanket. In his weakened state, he barely had the strength, and even with his raging flames the fabric did not light.

And suddenly, Tobio understood what that blanket meant.

With a grunt, he heaved himself up, taking the blanket with him and tossing it aside. He grabbed Hinata by the arm once more, and this time, when prompted, Hinata scrambled clumsily from the ground. He stumbled, tripping over his own feet, but Tobio kept him upright, and nudged him on.

“Go,” he said, holding back none of his urgency. “Hinata, run.”

Together, they lurched on, bolting down the street to the sounds of doors being thrown open behind them, and voices yelling in their wake. Tobio didn’t dare look back. He didn’t want to see what weapons they might have in store, what hostilities they hold towards him and his demon.

Instead, he kept his eyes forward, urging Hinata faster, beyond the edge of the village and into the stretching darkness before them, until the people and their cries fade to nothing.

Then and only then did they stop, spent. Tobio bent double, hands on his knees, swallowing air desperately, and beside him Hinata crumpled to the floor, his flames the barest spark in a sea of never-ending black.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The days that followed passed by with ever-growing tension. Upon reaching a safe distance from the town, Tobio had carried a limp, rapidly cooling Hinata onward, up into the mountains, where he found a cave deep enough to seek shelter.
> 
> There, he built a fire of his own, contained in a little pit made of stacked stones, and he laid the demon out beside it to keep him warm. He fed them both with dried wood that he gathered outside the cave, and when he cooked for himself, he slipped Hinata his egg shells, seeds, or cut-off strips of meat, but it was difficult. Hinata was barely present enough to eat. Tobio spent his time crushing, grinding, or even chewing up his food enough for Hinata to swallow it down.
> 
> All the while, the little hollow in his chest where his heart used to be grew colder. In the hours when the weather beyond the cave was dismal and the fire not enough, the empty space in him ached with the chill, so much so he had lifted Hinata up into his lap before the flame, and wrapped his arms about his chest to hold in what little heat he had.
> 
> It helped to warm him, but the pain remained all the same.

The days that followed passed by with ever-growing tension. Upon reaching a safe distance from the town, Tobio had carried a limp, rapidly cooling Hinata onward, up into the mountains, where he found a cave deep enough to seek shelter.

There, he built a fire of his own, contained in a little pit made of stacked stones, and he laid the demon out beside it to keep him warm. He fed them both with dried wood that he gathered outside the cave, and when he cooked for himself, he slipped Hinata his egg shells, seeds, or cut-off strips of meat, but it was difficult. Hinata was barely present enough to eat. Tobio spent his time crushing, grinding, or even chewing up his food enough for Hinata to swallow it down.

All the while, the little hollow in his chest where his heart used to be grew colder. In the hours when the weather beyond the cave was dismal and the fire not enough, the empty space in him  _ached_  with the chill, so much so he had lifted Hinata up into his lap before the flame, and wrapped his arms about his chest to hold in what little heat he had.

It helped to warm him, but the pain remained all the same.

It was unnerving, watching Hinata lie like he was, quiet and barely moving. Like he were sleeping, only, Tobio knew the little demon didn’t  _need_  sleep. Not normally.

On the third day, Tobio awoke to find Hinata lying still at his side. In the small stone pit, the fire burned as embers, smoking listlessly, and Hinata burned much the same.

Tobio propped himself up on one elbow and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He felt  _cold_ , more so than he’d ever felt before, like ice carving a hole somewhere deep within him.

Hinata lay flat on his back, the flames lighting his skin barely even flickering. They dripped lazily towards the floor in thick, molten blobs, sitting so thin over Hinata’s face that in places, Tobio could see something pale, like skin, and the defined point of a small, upturned nose. He looked smaller, somehow, than Tobio remembered. Shrivelled and shrunken, a shell of what he was. Aside from the fullest twitches of his fire and the slow, lethargic pulse of the little blue orb in his chest, Hinata wasn’t moving.

Tobio blinked down at him and, hesitant, poked at a finger at his shoulder.

The little demon was  _cold_. Tiny wisps of flame chased Tobio’s hand as he moved it from Hinata’s shoulder to his face, prodding his cheek, and then to his chest, where Tobio pressed his palm over the sluggish beat of his heart.

“Oi,” Tobio said, sitting up, shuffling to his knees. “Hinata, wake up.”

The cold within him made it hard to  _breathe_. It bore down on him like a weight, squeezing the air from his lungs.

Were demons supposed to breathe? Tobio didn’t know. He couldn’t remember—Hinata could choke, he knew, remembering the hacking coughs around the smoke billowing out of him, and the wheezing, but did he need to breathe to survive? Fires need oxygen, but did the demon have lungs with which to filter it?

Regardless of the answer, Tobio was sure of one thing. Hinata wasn’t breathing now.

“Hinata,” he said, more alert. Tobio shook him hard by the shoulder. Hinata’s head lolled on his neck, and Tobio’s heart gave a dull, drawn thump inside the demon’s chest.

For a moment, Tobio toyed with the idea of leaving the fire demon be. He’d come around in his own time, perhaps, when whatever he’d ingested worked it’s way out of him. Maybe this was all a part of the healing process—to hibernate what parts of him he doesn’t need, conserve energy for vital processes.

But the hollow in Tobio’s chest  _hurt_. It no longer felt light and airy, only pained, and cold. It felt to him like Hinata’s body wasn’t wasting any excess energy protecting the worthless heart of a wanderer.

He needed to wake Hinata up. In the corner of the cave stood a pile of wood, collected the day before, sticks and twigs ready to feed his fire and the demon, and littering the floor lay little splintered fragments of bark. Tobio scooped up a handful and slipped it between Hinata’s lips. It hissed and it burned, but Hinata didn’t chew, and he didn’t swallow.

When wood didn’t fuel him, Tobio tried air. He plucked his cloak from the floor and wafted Hinata with it, scattering ash from the fire and more wood slivers about the cave, and while Hinata’s flames crackled and roared, the demon himself didn’t move.

Tobio dropped his cloak to the cave floor and rubbed a hand over his aching chest.

He didn’t know how to help Hinata. That was never something he learned, not before, with his family, and not after, living on his own. The only thing Tobio had learned in that time was how to help another human, a being with lungs and a heart and a brain that needed to  _breathe_.

He wasn’t sure whether it would work, but his options were limited.

Slowly, hesitantly, Tobio pressed the pad of his thumb to Hinata’s chin and, gently, pulled his mouth open again. Hinata didn’t protest, only lay quiet, the flames about his jaw licking lazily at Tobio’s fingers. Steeling himself, he pinched Hinata’s nose closed, sucked in a breath, and cupped his mouth over the demons open lips.

Within the cold, cold hole in him, something gave a distant throb. It echoed around the empty space, and slowly, like swallowing liquor, a warmth began to spread from his lips where they settled over Hinata’s and down, pouring into him.

Hinata gave a strange shudder beneath him. His chest arched up, off the cold floor, and distant thumping grew stronger, closer. Tobio sighed out his breath into the demon’s mouth, and pressed closer, swallowing down the warmth he gave. It drowned out the chill in him, soothing the ache that had settled over the last few days. It felt  _good_ , to feel truly warm.

And then, without warning, Hinata sucked in a tight, shuddering breath, and a searing heat burst to life around them.

Tobio sprung back, toppling to get out of reach as Hinata’s flames stretched to fill the full height of the cave, the roar of them deafening. They lept and whirled, a furious tornado, ripping about so violently they tore dusty, crumbling chunks of rock from the ceiling.

Tobio cowered from the heat and the thunderous sound, shielding his face with his forearm as Hinata’s fire raged.

When the flames settled, the little demon was sitting upright, one hand clutched tight over his chest and the other over his mouth, and with eyes dark as coals, he stared down at where Tobio lay.

“What are you doing?”

Tobio pushed himself to sit, leaning back on his hands. Up and down his outstretched legs, little patches of his trousers smoked, tiny holes with charred edges littering the thin fabric to expose red, burned skin beneath. His boots, scuffed, worn, falling apart, were burned in places, too. The flimsy rubber soles stank of it. The arm he’d used to cover himself felt tender, and  _hot_ , stinging, the sleeve burnt away to tickle loose and itching at his elbow, but Tobio didn’t dare look at it.

He didn’t dare look  _away_  from Hinata.

“What do you—”

“What were you  _trying_  to do?”

Tobio gaped at him. Something in Hinata’s voice sounded off, deeper, echoing out of him. His words were a demand framed as a question. His fire crackled in the otherwise quiet of the cave, and his gaze didn’t waver. It held strong, bearing down on Tobio like a weight, real and full, pinning him where he sat.

“Wake—wake you up,” Tobio said. Something like shock had numbed his tongue, so much so his words came stuttered, tripping and fumbling behind his teeth. “You’ve been sick, remember?”

Hinata’s hand fell away from his mouth. Slowly, he blinked.

“Sick…” he said, sounding a little more like himself. Tobio nodded.

“For days,” he said. “I couldn’t wake you up, so I thought….you don’t remember?”

Hinata relaxed the fist clenched over his chest—over Tobio’s heart, beating fuller and warmer than it had done in days—and blinked again, quick and rapid.

“I don’t…”

Cautiously, Tobio raised himself to his feet. He took a few hesitant steps towards Hinata, but the little demon didn’t move, only watched, following Tobio’s path until he stopped, and sat, cross-legged on the opposite side of the stone pit.

Then, Hinata frowned.

“I don’t remember.”

“Anything?”

“I remember…eating something, and I remember feeling bad, but everything after that is…hazy.”

For a moment, Tobio thought about what he should do. He wondered whether he should tell Hinata the whole truth, about the village and the people, the fire blanket, and for a little while he prompted him, baiting with little details, but nothing seemed familiar to the demon.

The story Tobio told him came diluted. A watered down version of what happened, bypassing the people and what they did, and detailing only his sickness, and the last few days in the cave.

For a while, Hinata said nothing. He sat, staring into the stone pit, thinking. And then, after a time,

“Why did you…do that,” he said, reaching up to press two tentative fingers to his lips, “that thing you did?”

“What  _thing_?”

“The—the mouth thing.”

“The mouth—I was trying to make you  _breathe_ , idiot.”

“I’m— _stupid_ , I’m a  _demon_. I don’t—we don’t breathe like—not the same way you humans do.”

Tobio bristled.

“How was I supposed to know that, huh? You didn’t fall from the sky with a set of instructions,” He hissed. For a moment, Hinata’s flames roared threateningly, and his eyes burned darker still.

But then he settled, down to barely a flicker, and when he blinked, his eyes looked brighter, calmer.

“Just…don’t do that again, okay? Don’t—do the mouth thing.”

“Fine. Like I’d want to anyways.”

“Good, because I don’t want you to.”

Tobio huffed, flicking a stray stick and sending it skittering across the floor of the cave.

“How come you’re feeling better, anyways?” Tobio asked grumpily. Hinata gave himself a look-over, and, obviously a little confused himself, shrugged.

“Don’t know,” he said, “you must’ve done something right.”

“Yeah,” Tobio said, smugly. “The  _mouth thing_.”

Hinata stared over at him, and in the shifting light of his flame, Tobio saw it again; for the briefest of moments, the molten orange of his eyes flickered coal-black.

“Don’t do it again,” Hinata said. “No matter what.”

* * *

 

Neither of them asked any more questions, nor offered any more answers. Instead, they remained in the cave another day more, Hinata sparking a fire in the leftover kindling for Kageyama to cook over. Tobio tended to his burns—those on his legs he splashed with water, before upending the remainder of his canteen over his right forearm. The smaller burns would heal just fine, but this one gave a little cause for concern.

The skin was an angry red, and it was raw, burning, littered with blisters that shone wet and sticky in the fire light. From his pack he pulled a little bottle of jelly, stolen from a potion seller a few towns back, and with trembling fingers he lathered it over the wound. Hinata watched on with a pained, guilty expression, as Tobio grit his teeth and smeared the burn until every inch was covered. His quiet apologies didn’t stop even after Tobio dressed the wound, hiding it from view.

“It’s fine,” Tobio said, over and over, “it’ll heal. What  _won’t_ heal is my shirt, or my boots.”

Tobio wiggled his boot-clad feet in front of him. The soles were coming off at the toes, and the laces were frayed, falling to pieces. The thin, weak fabric had torn in places, and with the new, burned holes, Tobio knew they wouldn’t last him all that much longer.

Aside from his guilt, Hinata seemed a little more himself. His flames were no longer ashen and grey and his eyes had returned to their usual burning amber, and his fingers once again grabbed hungrily for Tobio’s leftovers. More than once, he reached for the pile of waxy wrappings, and more than once, Tobio slapped his greedy hand away.

“Don’t  _eat_  that,” he said, tossing the wrappings out of reach. “It made you hurt last time, and it makes your… _smoke_  smell weird.”

Tobio didn’t entirely understand the miraculous recovery, but for now, he wouldn’t question it. Hinata was okay, and that was all that mattered.

The daylight passed in fits of snoozing, lounging in the fading light, and moments of quiet where Tobio rested, and Hinata hummed, playing with little balls of his fire. It felt nice, having the little demon pleasantly hot and lively once again. The cool, pained pit in Tobio’s chest no longer ached, and he felt warmed enough, finally, to get some rest.

He awoke to a world stripped pink. From the mouth of the cave, Tobio could see the sunset far on the horizon, dipping beneath the distant points of trees. Hinata sat just beyond the opening to their shelter, face upturned to the pooling inky sky above them, the smallest smattering of stars emerging in the darkness. He turned when Tobio sat himself upright, and smiled over at him.

“I changed your bandage,” he said, pointing down at Tobio’s forearm. “I didn’t…do a very good job, I don’t think, but I tried my best.”

The wrapping was far from well-done. It sat baggy in some places, too tight in others, and rather than pinning it into place, Hinata had simply tied the ends in a messy knot. It wasn’t perfect, but it held, and the little demon had at least remembered to lather on a little of the jelly from Tobio’s pack before wrapping him.

It was messy, but it would do, and more than anything, Tobio recognised the apology in the wide, earnest look Hinata was giving him. I felt…nice, almost, to know that Hinata was trying his best to look after him.

Hinata pressed a palm flat to his chest, and smiled a little wider.

“You’re not so heavy now,” he said. Tobio blinked at him, then cleared his throat, and tucked away a loose piece of the bandage.

“It’s good. Thanks,” he said. Hinata’s grin dropped, and he pointed an accusatory finger.

“Liar!”

“It’ll do,” Tobio said instead. Hinata narrowed his eyes at him.

“…better,” he said, “I guess. Are we going somewhere else now?”

Tobio nodded. The sky outside appeared endlessly clear, no clouds blocking the stars. The moon was only a sliver, but with Hinata beside him, the darkness didn’t much matter.

And now that Hinata was doing better, he saw no reason to hang around.

Now that Hinata was doing better, Tobio wanted to put as much distance between them and the village as he possibly could.


	4. Chapter 4

Tobio hadn’t anticipated feeling so vulnerable once they left the cave.

In the shelter of the trees, things were alright. They at least provided a little cover, and places for them to run, to  _hide_ , should they need to, but soon enough they were leaving the forest and wandering a dirt path, hoof-prints and tire treads clear in the dust.

They walked on, Hinata chattering away at his side, but all the while Tobio stayed on high alert, one hand curled around the handle of his knife, tucked deep beneath his cloak.

At the brow of a hill, Tobio stilled them both with a hand at Hinata’s shoulder. Down in the valley, a sleepy-looking town lay quiet, and peaceful. The road they had followed thus far continued on, downward, trailing through the very center of the town. They’d be surrounded, in there, houses on all sides and the road all too easy to block off.

Tobio cast a sideways glance at the little demon, who was looking up at him, head cocked to one side.

“Why’d we stop?” He asked. Tobio didn’t know how to answer. Hinata didn’t remember—he didn’t  _know_  what happened, in the last village. He didn’t know what those people had tried to do to them. To  _him_. Tobio eyed the bright blue orb pulsing in Hinata’s chest warily. This demon wasn’t indestructible; he had weaknesses, vulnerabilities for fearful humans to exploit, and he carried a cargo too precious for Tobio to risk.

He didn’t know how to answer, and so he didn’t bother. Instead, he pulled Hinata on, off the road and into the long grass beside it. Little patches of it smoked and curled in the heat.

“Stop that,” Tobio said, “You’re burning crops.”

Tobio didn’t tell him he feared the trail his scorch marks would leave behind. He dragged him on quickly, passing around the outskirts of the town at a run. Hinata floated along behind him, no longer trying to keep pace, leaving bright, flickering sparks in the darkness in their wake.

“Why’re we going around?” He asked. Tobio left the question to hang in the quiet along with the pant of his breath, the rustle of the grass around his legs, and the low crackle of Hinata’s flame. Nothing else stirred. Not the wind, not the town, not a single soul within it.

Tobio ran until they met the road again beyond the valley. There, he stopped, and Hinata sank gently to the ground, watching Kageyama tilt his face to the sky to catch his breath.

“How come we didn’t pass through this one?”

Tobio cast about for a believable excuse. He wiped sweat from his face with his bandaged arm, and reached into his bag for his canteen, but found it empty. Since using the last on his wounds, Tobio hadn’t found a place to refill, yet. The rest of his bag, too, felt pitifully empty at his side.

“I need food,” he said. “Supplies. Don’t want anyone to know I’m here, that’s all. C’mon, it’s nearly morning, we need to find somewhere to sleep.”

Sure enough, as they walked, the sky in the distance grew a little lighter. Tobio hurried them on, ignoring his itchy, parched mouth. They made it into a dense patch of trees above the town, at the foot of a small, sheer mountain, just before the sun came up, and deep in the middle of the copse, they stopped. Tobio tumbled down to rest against the trunk of a tree. Hinata sat, too, sinking cross-legged to the ground.

“You’re being…strange,” he said. Tobio knocked his head back against the bark and looked down his nose at the little demon. He was watching him with his head tipped to one side, like he always did, expecting an explanation Tobio didn’t know how to give.

“Just tired,” Tobio said. He unfastened his cloak from around his neck, and jerked his head, indicating for Hinata to come closer. Like always, Hinata tucked himself into Tobio’s side, though the early morning was warm enough without his fire. “Don’t burn my cloak.”

With that, Tobio tossed the fabric over them both. Hinata make a garbled sound of protest, wriggling restlessly as the cloak settled, muttering his complaints.

“It’s  _stuffy_  like this,” he whined, kicking his feet out from beneath the edge. Tobio shucked the fabric back over him.

“Tough,” Tobio said. He rearranged his cloak so that every last inch of Hinata, save for his head above the nose, was covered. “I’m cold.”

This wasn’t true. If anything, Tobio was far too warm, sweating out what little water he had left in him, but this patch of trees was only small. If anyone were to pass through, Hinata’s flames would draw too much attention.

Hinata grumbled, but quit his active protest. Instead, he tucked his nose into Tobio’s shoulder, huffing unnecessarily loudly.

“You stink,” he said. Tobio dug an elbow into his side.

“Shut up, I need sleep,” he said. The little demon tipped up his head and stuck out his fiery tongue, before resting his chin on Tobio’s shoulder and blinking up at him.

“When do you want me to wake you up?”

“While it’s still light,” Tobio said. Hinata squirmed beside him.

“Can I come this time? I  _really_  wanna see what—”

“ _No_ ,” Tobio said sharply, and then, softer, “no. Not…not this time.”

“But you’ll let me come  _some time_ , right?”

Tobio swallowed, cotton tongue sticking to his teeth.

“Right,” he said. “Let me  _sleep,_  now.”

Hinata hummed quietly at his side. Those three days in the cave had made it clear to Tobio how used he was getting to Hinata’s constant, low level of noise. Whether he was talking, or yelling, or just humming like this, gentle and melodic, Hinata was always making sounds, and Tobio had grown so accustomed to them, he was almost happy to have them back again.

“Your boots really  _are_  wrecked, huh?” Hinata said suddenly, after a time. Tobio cracked open an eye, and rolled it down to look at him. The daylight was growing around them and above them, but even still, what little of Hinata that wasn’t covered by the cloak was eye-catching.

“What part of  _let me sleep_  did you not understand?”

“Just saying,” Hinata murmured. “You really should get some new ones.”

“Can’t. Nobody sells shoes on street markets, you have to go in buildings for those. It’s not busy enough. I’d be seen.”

“You’re gonna hurt your feet.”

“They already hurt,” Tobio said. “You know what else hurts?”

“Your hand?”

“ _And?_ ”

Hinata jumped his knees against Tobio’s thighs as he thought, but he pulled up blank, shrugging, and twisting his face away from Tobio’s boots, where they poked out from beneath the cloak, to look at him.

“My  _eyes_. You wanna know why?”

“Why?”

“Because,” Tobio said, dunking Hinata’s whole head beneath the cloak, “they’re  _tired_.”

* * *

 

When Tobio awoke, it was with a start, though he wasn’t sure what it was that woke him. The forest about him was near silent in the late, orange light of the sun, broken only by the chirp of birds and the soft shift of leaves in the wind. Not even  _Hinata_  made a—

Tobio sat up, abrupt. His cloak, which had been resting over him, slipped from his chest into his lap, and beneath it—nothing.

He scrambled to his feet, wheeling about, and he was about to throw on his cloak and scoop up his bag, when the fire demon himself emerged from between the trees with both hands clasped behind his back. The moment he saw Tobio he froze, grinning, and rocked from heel to toe, so high his little body lifted momentarily off the ground.

“Where—” Tobio began, blinking rapidly. He rubbed his knuckles into his eyes, trying to shift some of the haze that hung over him from sleep. Hinata beamed wider still.

“I got you something!” He said. Tobio raised a brow at him. With a flourish, Hinata pulled his hands around from behind his back. Dangling from his fingers by the laces was a pair of heavy, sturdy-looking boots.

“I wanted to thank you, for looking after me,” Hinata said as Tobio gaped at him, “and you said you can’t get these yourself, so…here!”

Tobio stared at the boots. They looked…good, strong, made of quality leather with real metal hoops for the laces. Tobio glanced down at his own worn, torn, sagging shoes, and back again.

Hinata held them out a little further, nodding encouragingly when Tobio reached for them. They felt warm on his palms, unusually so, for leather, and they were incredibly well-kept, save for a couple of small, charred patched around the uppers, like holes left by spitting coals.

A strange smell hung about the boots, too, something Tobio couldn’t quite place, but it put him in mind of nights by the fire, and of food. Cooking.

“Where did you get them?” Tobio asked. Hinata rocked on his feet again.

“Found them!” He said. “They’ll fit you, right? They looked big enough.”

Tobio stared down at the boots. Something felt…off, about the look of them, and that  _smell_ , but Hinata was looking on so insistently, so  _expectantly_ , that Tobio didn’t dwell on it. Instead, he sat, and pulled off his old, broken boots, replacing them with the new ones.

They felt  _luxurious_  in comparison. The insides were soft, and the soles thick, and when Tobio laced them up they didn’t pinch at his skin at all.

He wiggled his toes, and clambered to his feet once more.

“Well?” Hinata prompted, “do they fit? Are they good?”

“Yeah.” Tobio bounced on the balls of his feet, testing the give. “Yeah, they’re great.”

“So you like them?”

Tobio surveyed the new shoes one last time, before he nodded.

“I like them.”

Hinata gave a long, giddy whine, filling with so much hot air he lifted up off the floor once more, higher this time, so high Tobio grabbed him by the knee in fear he might just drift away.

“Don’t…don’t disappear like that, though,” he said, tugging the demon back down. “You shouldn’t— we have a deal, remember? My heart for your companionship. That means you stay  _with_  me.”

Hinata sank slowly to his toes and lowered his feet fully to the ground. He lifted a hand to rest over Tobio’s heart where it pulsed, bright and blue in his chest, and clenched his fingers into a tight fist.

“…right,” Hinata said, and then, “I’m sorry. I just wanted to— to do something nice. It made you feel good, right? It made this,” he clenched his fist even tighter, “feel a little lighter.”

Tobio stared at his fluttering heart, and something like real pity washed over him. He’d never put too much thought into what it really must be like, for Hinata to carry this burden for him. The weight of it hadn’t simply disappeared with their deal, only transferred.

“It did,” Tobio said. “Thanks.”

Hinata smiled, a little weakly, and dropped himself to sit against the trunk of a tree. Without prompt, he began unpacking Tobio’s bag, emptying it into a pitiful pile on the floor. He dumped out the measly left-overs, the little tub of jelly Tobio had used to treat his burns, and his cooking equipment. Then, he held out the bag for Tobio to take.

“Don’t be too long,” he said. Tobio slung the pouch over his shoulder and secured it under his cloak. He checked his knife was still tucked in his pocket, and, throwing his hood up, knelt before the little demon, who had begun passing his fiery fingers through the flames dancing over his fiery feet.

He flicked him gently between the eyes, enough to startle Hinata into stilling his hand and blinking owlishly up at him.

“I won’t be long,” he said, “so wait  _here_ , okay? I don’t need anymore boots.”

Hinata stuck out his tongue, but something like a grin teased across his face.

At Hinata’s nod, he stood, adjusting the edges of his hood around his face, and turned, weaving through the trees towards the road beyond.

* * *

 

In the market, whispers passed between the townspeople. Tobio meandered his way between the bustle, grabbing what he could and stowing it in his pack. Mostly food, as much as he could carry, something amber in a crystal bottle that Tobio thought he could sell, once they had traveled far enough away, and milk that he vowed to drink the moment he was back in the forest. He also grabbed cloth from a man selling shawls— thin strips in plain colours— to act as bandages for the time being, for the one about his arm was sagging and discoloured. From beneath a witch’s herby, aromatic awning, he took a small vile of potion that promised to speed up healing when dripped on welts and sores.

All the while, the people around him murmured on. Tobio paid little mind, catching the barest snippets of conversation— _‘he should have been back by now, should he not?’_ and  _‘last he wrote, he was only four towns to the west’_ and  _‘I thought he’d be back this evening_ ’—and something about them, for the briefest of moments, sparked something odd in him. Not quite curiosity and not quite concern, but something in between that he couldn’t place.

It was when Tobio was packing a loaf of bread into his heavy, bulging bag, that the sky overhead abruptly turned dark. Thick, grey clouds rumbled in, and with them came rain, pouring in sheets. People hurried for shelter, and vendors were quick to cover their wares from the downpour. Tobio stared up into the rain, a deep, darkening sense of dread dawning within him.

 _Hinata_.

* * *

 

By the time Tobio reached the trees, the storm was raging. A sharp, sideways rain lashed at him, stinging his face, wind whipping his cloak about his legs. The branches lurched overhead, trunks bowing beneath the force of the gale. Tobio, growing more frantic, stumbled on.

The trees provided barely any shelter from the heaving rain. Water poured through every gap it could find, slicing through the leaves, soaking into Tobio’s cloak to settle on his skin. He ran on, tripping over roots and long grass, over the hem of his cloak, stumbling all the way to the tree where Hinata—where Hinata—

Tobio braced a palm on the trunk of a nearby tree and heaved to catch his breath.

On the ground lay the discarded items from his bag. Some of the lighter pieces, wrappings and leftover food and even his chopsticks, had blown about and sat strewn over the forest floor. This was where Hinata should have  _been_. This was where he was supposed to wait.

But the little demon wasn’t there, and every inch of the forest, from leaf to branch to trunk to floor, was completely saturated.

Dazedly, Tobio gathered up his things. He fit the soaking items into his pack along with his new supplies, then straightened up, and looked around. Hinata had to be  _somewhere._ He couldn’t be gone, Tobio was sure he’d have felt it, if anything had happened, much like the constant cold in his chest while Hinata was sick. If Hinata was  _gone,_ then surely…

No. He must’ve left. And Tobio had to find him, before the rain and the wind and the  _wet_  did.

Quickly, he wrapped one of the long scarves around his mouth and nose, and pulled his hood low, until only his eyes were exposed to the elements, and then, with everything packed into his bag, he set out to find his demon.

Tobio noticed something odd settle over him, the further he strayed from the forest. At first, his walk was quick, and his eyes would dart here and there and everywhere, searching for any flicker, any spark of light that might be Hinata, a constant, heavy dread weighing him down, leaden. It stole the breath from him, made him pant and wheeze, this  _need_  to find Hinata, to make sure he and the heart within him were safe.

But as time went on, a trickle of something refreshingly  _cool_  began to fill him. It felt light, and airy, and it crowded out the dread, but with it it took something else, something Tobio couldn’t quite name. Some deep, faceless part of him, something that had always been there, lurking in the background. Tobio wasn’t sure what it was, but things felt…different, without it.

The further he walked, the more of this unnameable piece of his puzzle was taken away, and alongside it left his panic. The frantic desperation seemed  _silly_ , now. Finding Hinata was a priority, of course, because the fire demon held something dear that belonged to Tobio. Preserving and protecting what was his was the most important thing, but there was no use in  _panicking_  about it.

So on he walked, calmer now, barely feeling the rain spit at him. He tucked his nose deeper into his scarf and scanned the landscape thoroughly, long, sweeping arcs of his gaze first one way, and then the other. When he found no signs of the demon, he moved on.

He continued in this haze until he reached the crest of a hill. There, he stopped, and surveyed the land around him. Beyond, there was no shelter, nowhere for fire to survive the onslaught. Nowhere for the demon to shield that which he’d taken from Tobio.

And so, he turned back. The demon must have taken refuge somewhere in the trees, or perhaps up on the mountain. Tobio had been sure there were no caves on the rock face, and no easy way to climb it even if there were, but the demon couldn’t have gone far in the rain, and places to hide in this direction were entirely absent.

Night had fallen, as Tobio walked, and without the demon he had only the star-speckled sky to guide him. It didn’t much matter— the road beneath his feet was wet, muddy, but present, and so long as he didn’t stray into the grass on either side, Tobio was confident he could find his way  _without_  the fire the demon gave.

Perhaps the water soaking his clothes was beginning to take its toll, for strangely, Tobio began to feel heavy once more. Slowly, at first, like hands pressing to his shoulders, trying to coax him down. This weight brought pangs, distant, painful jolts to his chest that once or twice stopped him in his tracks. Tobio paused on the road, a hand braced over his heart— except, he had no heart, no lively beat in his chest, because the demon held it.

 _Hinata_  held it. And Tobio had to find him.

Tobio’s chest throbbed again. That’s right. He had to find him, find the fire demon in the storm. He had to make sure—make sure his heart was okay. Make sure  _Hinata_ was okay.

Further down the road, the weight grew heavier, and something familiar began to settle in him. With a start, Tobio remembered that this—whatever it was—had been missing. How could he have forgotten? It sank into place slowly, filling more of him the further and faster he walked. Tobio chased the feeling, the way it settled within him, walking blindly on. It tugged at him, drawing him forward, until he was once again beside the trees, at the foot of the little, sheer mountain.

This feeling called to him. To swallow it all down and set it right, back into place where it belonged, Tobio had to go  _up_.

The mountain crumbled beneath his hands and feet as Tobio climbed. There was no path that he could see, only brittle, jutting rock and shallow crevices, but still, Tobio scrambled on, for this, he knew though he might not know  _why_ , was where he needed to be.

More than once, his wet boots slipped, and Tobio felt sharp wedges of rock dig into his palms, tearing his skin. It gathered beneath his nails and fell into his eyes, but still he climbed, up and up, until finally, he found a ledge just wide enough to fit on. He dragged himself up, and there, he stopped.

For the first time in hours, since the storm and the forest and losing Hinata, Tobio felt almost  _whole_ again, like all the pieces of him were back together, or near enough. He climbed to his feet,  and wiped his bloody hands on his cloak.

 _Hinata_ , he thought hazily. How could he have been so easily sidetracked? He needed to focus on finding Hinata.

He walked along the ledge, tucking himself into the rock face to avoid the precarious, crumbling edge, from one end to the other. As he passed the midpoint, over the howl of the wind and the whip of the rain, Tobio heard another, familiar sound.

“Uwaaaah, there you are!”

Tobio whirled around. He’d heard Hinata, he was sure of it, but no matter what direction he turned his head in, he couldn’t see the little demon anywhere.

“Hinata?” He called over the rain.

“I’ve been waiting for ages! Where’ve you been, huh?”

“Where have  _I_  been? Where the hell have  _you_  been, dumbass! I’ve been—I looked for you  _everywhere_! Where—where are you?”

“Over here!” Hinata called. Tobio hung his head, sighing into the oncoming wind.

“And where the hell is  _here_?”

“He— _here_.”

Suddenly, a flicker of light caught Tobio’s eye. He twisted on his heel, almost stumbling over his own feet in his haste, to find Hinata’s fiery face peeking out of the smallest gap in the wall of the mountain.

“Get over here!” He yelled, ducking out of sight. “Before I get all wet.”

Tobio’s shoulders sagged, relieved. He’d found him. He had  _found_  him. Hinata was alive, and fine, and sheltered from the rain.

Tobio crouched by the mouth of the opening. It extended deeper into the mountain than he’d have thought, and seemed a little taller and wider inside than the opening made it appear. Hinata had shimmied himself all the way to the back of the crevice, far from reach of even the smallest splashes of rain.

“I’m coming in,” Tobio said, looping his bag strap from over his shoulder, leaving the pouch on the ledge. He crawled head first, wedging himself in the gap, and only then did he drag his bag in behind him.

Hinata pressed himself into the very corner, against the rocks, and pulled a face.

“You’re all damp,” Hinata said, wrinkling his nose. Tobio shuffled a little deeper into the crevice, until every last part of him was tucked away from the rain, and then he settled, wedged up against Hinata.

“Dry me then.”

Hinata huffed, but did as told, starting with Tobio’s hair. With both hands, he blazed his flame, and though they cast a pleasantly warm air over him, they didn’t burn. Tobio settled his back against the wall of the crevice and closed his eyes.

The hole in the mountain wasn’t really big enough for two people. It was cramped, wedged with one knee pressed against Hinata’s, the wet fabric of his trousers sizzling away in his fire. Though the fit was tight, squashed between Hinata on one side and his bulging bag at the other, hard rock walls at his front and back, it was  _warm_ , and being with Hinata made him feel more like himself than he had done, out and alone in the rain.

Now that he had settled, his mind wandered to the abnormal change in mood his search had brought him. It wandered to that strange feeling of… _detachment_ , almost, of not caring for Hinata himself and only the heart that he treasured as his prize. Tobio hadn’t realised just how much he’d begun to care for the little demon’s well-being, until that feeling had been stripped from him.

He wondered whether he should mention it. Hinata was chatting away, all “I waited a little bit, but the rain got too heavy,” and, “it would have put out my fire, if I’d stayed,” and, “I  _did_  wait for you, I promise,” all the while continuing to air the drips from the ends of Tobio’s hair and from the scarf, now tucked beneath his chin.

“Hinata—” Tobio began, loudly and slowly. Hinata fell silent and looked over at him, shifting the warmth of his hands from Tobio’s head to his shoulders and his chest.

“Yeah?”

Tobio shook his head.

“Never mind,” he said. “Doesn’t matter.”

It felt stupid, bringing it up. It was probably a result of his panic, his concern, perhaps a mix of that and the cold and the damp. A fever, maybe, driving him a little delirious.

But…it had felt very  _real_. Like some physical part of him had been lifted away and returned again.

Hinata didn’t press him. Instead he continued on with his apologies, and then, after a time, when Tobio’s clothes were dry and his skin warmed, the cuts on his hands and face treated with the little vial of potion, he asked about the town, and the market, and all the other things Kageyama took for himself.

They cooked in this crevice in the mountain as the storm calmed around them. Tobio ate heartily, raw vegetables, meat and eggs fried on his little flat stone, warmed on Hinata’s hand, and drank it all down with milk from the bottle. Hinata feasted on shells and, feeling unusually generous, Tobio offered him a whole slice of bacon, which he swallowed down greedily.

Perhaps it was his imagination, but Tobio thought, for a moment, that he saw little white glints of real, _human_  teeth beneath his flame. 

* * *

 

The rain didn’t let up until early morning. Tobio tossed his bag and his cloak out of the crevice and clambered out behind them, stretching in the first rays of the sunrise. In the daylight, Tobio could see what lay ahead for them, and the sight sank like a stone within him.

The land before them stretched bare and endless. Tobio searched it desperately, wishfully, but nothing new emerged. No trees, no mountains, just flat, open plains as far as he could see.

“It’s gone heavy again,” Hinata’s voice chimed in, and Tobio heard the crackle of his flames as he poked his way out of the crevice. “What does that mean?”

“The landscape’s changing,” Tobio said, gritting his teeth. “There’s…nowhere for you— ”  _for us_  “—to shelter—”  _to hide_  “—out there, if we get caught in the rain.”

“Yeah,” Hinata said. He slipped out onto the ledge, too, holding himself a couple of inches above the wet rock. He rubbed at his chest absently, and Tobio felt a pang of guilt. “That’d be  _real_ inconvenient. Why don’t we just…find somewhere to stay, like the people do? That way we don’t have to worry.”

Tobio scrubbed his hand over his face, and wearily lifted his cloak, throwing it around his shoulders. 

“We can’t just… _get_  a house,” he said. Hinata blinked over at him, and cocked his head.

“Then, why don’t we make one?”

“Make what?”

“A house!”

“I told you,” Tobio said, exasperated, “we can’t… _I_ can’t stay in one place.”

“Well,” Hinata said, “why don’t we make something we can move around in! Something we can take with us.”

Tobio blinked at him. The little demon swung his feet absently in the air, flames hissing and sputtering when they drifted too close to the damp rock. 

“A shelter…we can move,” Tobio said. “A moving house?”

Hinata nodded frantically, amber eyes burning brilliantly in the darkness.

“I can do it! I’ve already got my pay,” he said, patting his chest where Tobio’s heart lay, “at least, I can make it  _move_. We’ve got to build the thing, first.”

“Stop, stop just— just a second,” Tobio said, holding up a hand. “You want— to build a  _house_ , and make it  _move_ , just…so we have shelter from the bad weather?”

“Well,” Hinata said, “you want somewhere to live, right? Your heart— it always gets real  _heavy_ , when we talk about that stuff. You want a home, and together, we can make one!”

Tobio stared at him. He hadn’t noticed, but somewhere along the way, the demon had been picking up on patterns. Changing his bandage, finding him boots, talking about towns and homes and places to stay— Hinata had started, slowly, to pick up on these things that changed the way the burden he carried sat within him. It made the hollow in Tobio’s chest warm so suddenly and so  _pleasantly,_  his knees grew a little weak with it. 

“People’ll talk about us wherever we go!” Hinata went on, stretching out in the cool, clear air, hovering an inch or two above the wet ledge. Tobio shuffled his feet, straightening his cloak about his shoulders. If only the little demon knew that already, the pair were the talk of every town, every village, every home in the valley and beyond.

Hinata sucked in a lungful of air, so big his chest barreled up with it, and the flames around him roared. And then he turned, and he smiled, so bright in the creeping sunlight of the morning that Tobio, for a moment, was blinded by him. 

“Hinata and Tobio’s moving house!” Hinata said. “Has a nice ring to it, huh?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there we have the end of arc 1! I'm sure you can guess what's coming next :)


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